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cherry wine

I took Halloween off, not for any particular reason other than the fine suggestion to take a 3-day weekend every month. This month, I opted to focus on lots of tasks: I painted my bat houses; had Gerry over for dinner and to take a look at the bat houses and help figure out how to hang them; got a long-overdue haircut; took down the raspberry canes (ouch); did some cooking for the week to come; spent a lovely time at the last farmers’ market of the season with Kim (and then went for drinks at a lovely little Francophilic art bar called La Cour), and, most importantly for the purposes of this here blog, bottled some wine.

The red currant here is a really lovely color, so I put it in clear bottles. I don’t have many , apparently because I drink a lot more red, so there was some rattling around to find enough. You can see in the second photo that I over-filled one bottle and the cork wouldn’t go all the way in, so I had to take the cork out, pour off a little excess wine, and then re-cork. I have a little set aside from the rackings, which was good because I was a little short on the final bottle, and also because I then had a place to put the excess from that over-full bottle– probably the final one, overfilled in my excitement to have a use for the excess.

I wasn’t entirely sure the cherry had actually cleared– it’s very dark red, but I didn’t SEE any sediment, so what the heck, right? I had some left when I finished bottling, so I poured myself a big glass and had it as I cooked dinner for Gerry. (I was trying to get the light through the bottles to show the color off here, not to be unnecessarily artsy in my photography.)

Mom contributed Greek pizza, corn pudding, green beans, and sauteed cherry tomatoes, and I made sesame salmon and brownies, and also cooked the beans and tomatoes she brought down. I think things went quite nicely for someone cooking on an empty stomach and a big glass of wine. Said wine is still quite harsh, but the flavors are nice. I don’t get much cherry taste from it, but we’ll see after it ages some more. Gerry tried some and reckoned that it tasted like a nice dry red, though to be fair, the last time he had a glass of wine was probably 1987. (He drinks alcohol-free beer.) Half of this goes to Kim tonight, after I label and bottle, since she and I took the class in which we made this together. (We had to switch up our girls’ night this week– that starts happening a lot this time of year.)

I also racked the dandelion again, since the addition of bentonite made it clear up quite nicely. Alas, I apparently forgot to take a picture. I hope it’s ready to bottle soon, too! It’s a lovely golden color but I think I only have 2 clear bottles left, so unless I can get through 3 more bottles of white or rose soon, it may have to go in green. That said, I may bring a bottle of white tonight to help us along. Kirsten usually brings a red or rose, though often those are in screw-top bottles that I can’t use. Pictures for sure when I bottle, in any case. I’ll also start a new gallon of Concord soon, since I finally have some growlers free, and am kind of desperately in need of freezer space.